Thursday, July 26, 2012

Jane Fest 2012

Last Weekend was the Jane Austen festival at Locust Grove plantation in Louisville Kentucky.
I'm only now posting because It took me this long to recover from it!
As luck would have it I came down with a cold this weekend and woke up with a fever Friday morning. But having worked for months on my Jane Fest preperation I was not going to let a little fever keep me form going, so I chugged a some dayquill and got on the road. Naturally traffic was terrible and the 6 hour drive from Pittsburgh to Louisville turned into a 8 1/2 hour drive. I arrived tired and miserable.
The next morning My roomates and I got up at 5 :30 am to get ready and head out to Locust Grove to set up our booth. I share a booth at Jane fest with a freind of mine who sells mostly jane austen merchandise and some crafts.

My set up

Elegant disarray that's the look I'm going for! Also I have to much stuff for this table...

Customers!

The organizers had moved the vendors from the area infront of the house where it was the past 4 years to the side of the house.Which was awesome because there's lots of shade. Last year had been horrificly hot and we where right in the sun. This year the weather was nicer with temperatures in the 80's a breeze going . In the shade a I barely even broke a sweat.

Business was good, so good I barely got around to taking any pictures the first day.

The open robe, I loved how it turned out, I think it's my new favorite outfit.

I got lot's of compliments on my open robe. it was a dream to wear all cool and flowy.

Catching the breeze.

Showing off the back.

After the festival closed we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the ball.

taking off my stays is the best part of the day!

Business is booming so I took some time to bathe in money.

I sold my miss piggy ballgown to one of my roomates, she looks so much better in it than I ever did!

Meghan looked lovely wearing the miss piggy!

The ball seemed less crowded this year than last. I only danced once because I was rather exhausted had a cold, a sinus headache and my feet hurt. Also no one asked me to dance so I just sat there an looking pretty. I don't have many pictures I'm afraid, since I brought my cheap camera that does not take good pictures, I now regeret this. but I want to think I looked pretty nice

My ball get up.

As did my friends

All my pretty roommates in their finery

After the ball we sat around our room and ate cold pizza. then fell into bed exhausted.
The next day we did not have to get up quite as early since we already had our stuff set up. There where less people at the fesival on Sunday which means we actually got to visit with friends a bit.

Taking a stroll.

Doing some posing

And take some pretty pretty pictures!

Regency sorority!

I still did not manage to go to any of the entertainments or even set foot in the historic house. Oh well. but business was good so i'm not complaining. My friends however made it to the bare knuckle boxing exibit

The doctor got in on the boxing.

Afterwards they stalkted one of the handsome boxers

As did Deedee

And Reva was just overwhelmed by so much maleness!

Teh whole boxing thing inspired some friends to do Jane Austen fight club make up.

Caroline Bingly tried to steal her hat...

It turns out this year was the year of the sleeveless/short sleeved spencer, several of my friends had made them, and why not they lend themselves wonderfully to hot and humid weather.

Julie in her "Germanic" outfit

Stephanie will cut you if you ask if short sleeved spencers are period!

I paired my spencer with a huge feathered hat.

Jenni looked like a painting in her yummy green block print spencer

And Liz was all glowy from having spent way too much money on a fabulous hat to go with her purple spencer.

Towards the end of the day the stream of visitors died down quite a bit giving me the opportunity to do some shopping myself, I got this yummy cream and wedgewood blue cotton from a new vendor.

I'm so happy Jane fest now has a fabric store! I'm already planning to use the fabric for one of my day dresses for next year!
With some time on my hands I also got to take some more pictures...

Mr. Darcy came to visit out humble booth!

Looking like I own the place!

SO glad My BFF made it out on Sunday.

I had to add a picture of my hair, because some old lady accused it of being a bouffant!

With Charming Mr Rockold.

After packing up Reva and I headed to the liquor store for celebratory champagne, still dressed in regency clothes!

Oh yeah I go to Liquor Barn in period clothes....

so I can go cool off in the Beer cave!

The rest of the day was spent drinking going to dinner and just being silly hanging out with friends at the hotel.
I headed back to Pittsburgh the next morning.
Ever since coming back I have been happily spending my money,
I got 6 adorable hat boxes for transporting my hats to the next event.

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About The Bohemian Belle

This Belle isn't really "Bohemian" in the geographical sense( actually I'm German, but more about that later...) I'm more Bohemian in the common sense of the word. A free thinking , unconventional lover of of art, life and history. A full time Mama and part time free lance costume designer. Wife of a Physicist, and yes my life is really like The Big Bang Theory.
I'm a Living history enthusiast and Regency aficionado. Who is obsessed with historical costumes and period movies. I have my own little business making historical clothing and accessories.
Born and bred in Germany i have a noteworthy love of beer and sausage (as in the meat product) and think anything German is superior to anything else, well not really but we do make good beer and sausage...
This Blog will be mostly about my costuming and living history activities, but also my everyday musings about life. I can't promise regular posts, you see as hinted in the sub title of this blog I'm rather lazy.. But I do promise I will make said posts as entertaining as possible, if you are into costuming history and sausage that is.....